Matteo Salvini recently called for new Italian elections but the populist Five-Star Movement who his party entered into a coalition with, made a backdoor deal with establishment lefitsts. This has sidelined Salvini from power, at least for now.

Fox News:

Italy’s anti-establishment Five-Star Movement announced Wednesday that it had made a deal with the left-wing Democratic Party to form a coalition government — keeping embattled Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte in place while avoiding elections and ousting the right-wing League led by Matteo Salvini.

The shocking turn of events comes a week after the current government collapsed.

Salvini, who was deputy prime minister and whose party has been surging in the polls, had demanded snap elections and said that the 5-Star-League coalition government was not working amid increasing tensions between coalition parties. Polls suggested that Salvini’s League could win enough seats to govern outright, or with a smaller right-wing party.

This is unfortunate, and certainly a setback in the short term, but this might work out in the long term.

Obviously Salvini wasn’t able to get as much accomplished as he had hoped in the coalition government. There also seemed to be some problems between his party and the Five Star Movement.

But Salvini’s party is one of the most prominent right-wing parties in Europe and is only gaining in popularity. Sidelining him may only increase popular support for him and his party. And it sounds like he has the Italian people on his side.

We’ll just have to see how this plays out but this is definitely a short term disappointment. Salvini is unquestionably the man who needs to be running Italy and it looks as if the Italian people agree.